UPDATED: Marvel Back on Top in December 2011 Comics Sales

Original story:
DC’s The New 52 is still showing strength at the top of the comic book
sales charts, but the publisher’s reboot-fueled reign on top of
Diamond’s sales charts came to and end during its fourth month, with
Marvel Comics reclaiming its standard pre-boot position atop the
industry’s Market Share charts.

The year also ended on a mixed
note overall, ending up slightly ahead of 2010 in one sales category,
and very slightly behind in another.

According to preliminary
December 2011 sales data released by Diamond Comic Distributors Friday
morning, DC published the best four selling comics books of the month,
and eight of the Top 10, including Justice League #4 as December’s best-selling comic. However Marvel, which had strong debuts with Avengers: X-Sanction #1 (#5) and Defenders #1
(#7), was the top publisher of the month, posting a strong 39.05% Unit
Market Share, and a 34.43% Dollar Share. DC finished just percentage
points behind with 37.72% Unit and 33.74% Dollar Share, respectively.

As usual, Robert Kirkman’s latest Walking Dead volume (#15) was the best-selling graphic novel of the month.

Looking
at December more broadly, it was a down month compared to November,
which had the built-in benefit of having five shipping weeks compared to
December's four. Both comics and graphic novel sales were down by
double-figure percentages.

December 2011 compared to December
2010 is a tale of two different formats and sales categories. December
2010 was also a five shipping week month. Despite that, comic book Unit
sales were up 11.83% compared to a year ago, but only up 2.66% in terms
of Dollar sales.

Graphic novel sales, however, were way down in
both categories, with Unit sales of graphic novels being down over 20%
compared to a year ago and Dollar sales being down over 16%.

This
huge disparity helped drag overall Dollar sales in the red for the
year, with 2011 finishing down 0.89% compared to 2010. Unit sales,
however, were up 3.12% compared to the previous year.

Look for
much more analysis of not only December 2011 sales, but year-end sales
from Diamond and our content partner Comichron in the upcoming hours and
days.